


like you've never been this free

by mazily



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mazily/pseuds/mazily
Summary: My phone rings. My hand twitches, ready to throw it across the room.





	like you've never been this free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tristesses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/gifts).



It's late. Early. That grey-tinged time that comes when you're avoiding home for too long, drinking and wandering and trying not to wake up with the same person twice. Music leaks out from the club I'm walking past, _so put your arms around me tonight_ , some bland tosser smoking outside and leering like I'm something he wants to do tonight.

Full. Body. Shudder. So gross.

I tip into a kebab shop. Suddenly starving, grease-craving and desperate for salt. I'm half into my order of kebab and chips, _all of the chips, better order another,_ when the Arabic pop fuzzes into static and broken silences. A light flickers. Becca: at a table near the back of the shop and then gone again in the space of a glance down to pull out my wallet.

*

Julia's name all over my phone screen when I look at it in the morning: Julia and Julia and Julia again, _hi_ and _whats up_ and _check ur fcking phone bitch <3_. A link to Selena's instagram. To Selena talking to the world, "my first real show, come one come all," eyes bright and cheeks pink and hair streaked blue (me never quite sure how to feel about her, pity and pride and confusion all mixed up in my stomach). A blur of movement behind her: a shadow. A ghost. Motion and then nothing. The video stops and moves to someone else's, kale shakes and vegan curry and tinny hip hop, and I press my finger hard against the screen and close the app.

My hands shake. I stand, head spinny, and pull a jumper over my head.

The flat's cold and empty. Mum and Dad both off at work, and me alone to get my studying done without interruption. I trudge into the kitchen, start the water going, grind beans and dump them in the cafetiere. Wait for the coffee to brew: black and hot and far too slow for my pounding head. My anxious heart. I take a slice of bread out of the bag and begin to eat. Something to calm my stomach.

My phone rings. My hand twitches, ready to throw it across the room.

The display says it's Dad. Another text from Julia floating across the screen: _u see??????_

I answer Dad's call, "Yeah?," and flip the phone on speaker to listen. Music blares from a car outside, something with deep thumping bass to ward the fairies away. The coffee looks done; I plunge and pour it into my giant novelty mug, the stupid piece of Starbucks tat Dad got me for Christmas last, _ha ha isn't it just so funny what with you loving those sugary drinks like you do._ I dump in a couple spoonfuls of sugar. Blow over the top to try to will it cool enough to swallow.

"Sure thing," I say, when Dad tells me to take care of my own dinner tonight. He and Mum are going on one of their date nights or something-- _but it sounds like a wonderful thing_ and the revving of an engine, the music fading away with the traffic. I tense my hand.

The lights flicker. Off and on again, and I concentrate on my breathing.

"Study hard, chickadee," Dad says.

"I always do," I say. End the call and drop my phone on the counter, face down. Let the notifications flash blindly against the wood, signalling to nobody but an old tea stain. I open my evidence manual. With a pencil and a highlighter in hand and my laptop open to the side, I set to work.  

*

Eyes heavy and aching, I stand and stretch arms high above my head. The light shifted when I was busy trying to memorize every statute, and the sky outside is that strange long end of day brightness you only get in summer. My phone buzzes. Again and again and refusing to stop.

"What?"

Julia--I knew it was Julia without looking, knew it with a surety I haven't felt since Kilda's, since before--says, "You saw it too, yeah? On Lenie's video?"

"Revising's going well, thanks," I answer.

"Shut up, no it's not," Julia says. Her voice a little too high, vowels tripping on her consonants.

"You shut up." Familiar ground. Comfortable. I walk into the kitchen, open the refrigerator and scan the shelves. Nothing looks appetizing, nor do I feel like cooking. I close the door. Decide to order a pizza. Julia's still talking in my ear, nonsense and ghosts and things best left unsaid. "You fancy going to Selena's art thing," I hear myself say.

A moment of silence, and does Julia really find it so odd I'd--

"Yeah, sure," she says.

The lights spark. Pop and pop and the fizz of firecrackers, and I duck beneath the table. Try to relax, concentrate on my breathing, anything to make it stop. Julia's voice buzzes in my ear.

*

Dad's--he's such a dad, end of. He opens my bedroom door without knocking, makes a show of not looking inside (like I'm sat here half-dressed or something, with him at home too). Says, "Holly Mackey, clean your room before I toss all your goss out on the street."

My room isn't even messy. Just unpacked boxes stacked up in a corner, clothes spilling out of open bags. Here's temporary, after all, a stopping place between university and the rest of my life.No point in unpacking, in folding jumpers into drawers, just to pack it all up again in a matter of weeks. Months, the length of my barrister's degree, tops.

"Yeah, sure," I say. I turn up my music. _Honestly, don't give a fuck 'bout who ain't fond of me._

"Aw, c'mon then, chickadee," Dad says. "Feel some pity for an old man."

"Never," I say.

He dances a bit in the corridor--such. a. dad.--and I cringe at the embarrassment of it. He laughs. Keeps shaking his old man arse to Cardi B., hips off the beat and creaking with age.

"Jaysus," I say, "You look like you're having a stroke. Should I call 112?"

Two fingers in my direction, but he stops dancing. Leans against the doorframe, head just inside my room. "I'm just saying," he says, "Your mother's worried. Unpack a few boxes, make her happy, yeah?"

Fine. Yeah. There's probably a few boxes of things should go to the charity shops anyway. Boxes of memories that I'd rather just bin forever. The fractured bits of my childhood that never quite pieced back together properly, the fallout from Dad trying to apologize for forgetting I'm not him.

"Yeah?" he repeats.

"Yeah," I answer.

He nods. "Right," he says, lingering and ready to pounce, "Mate of a mate of your mom's--you remember Aida?--needs someone to cover a few shifts at her family's Italian, she said you might be interested. Nothing fancy, but if you want a little spending--"

"Sure," I say. Nonchalant. Why not?

"Wonderful," he says, "I'll just text you the details."

It's like he had no doubt I'd say yes; like he knows he can talk his way around to whatever he wants me to do. I almost change my mind. Almost tell him where he can stuff the job offer. I lie face down on my bed and listen for the snick of the door behind him as he leaves.

*

I take my time leaving at the end of my shift. Darkness everywhere outside, a street lamp dead at the corner. Me changed into my street clothes and carrying my uniform to launder: tomato sauce at the collar and _"chianti, the Castellore, ever so slightly chilled"_ at the wrist and splattered across the elbow from an accident near the bar. It looks like modern art. Like a memory.

I'm parched. Dying for something sticky and sweet, something to knock me off my head.

There was a group of girls sat in my section. Ready to scatter into gap years and university, jobs and marriage and babies at their breasts, some sort of atomic reaction splitting something that still feels perfectly bound. So young, they were, and it made me feel old. Past my glittering prime. I just wanted to pat them on the head and wrap them in cotton wool. My heart kept beating _protect, protect, protect_.

I'm meant to meet Julia at a pub, and then head to Selena's art thing. Something sparks up my spine, and I turn: a couple leaning against each other as they walk into a pub, a gang of businessmen drunk and catcalling the girls in front of them. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to explain the energy building up under my skin, hope fear excitement terror.

I turn at the next corner, into the pub.

It's a bit of a laugh, in all honesty. A lot of a joke. Poorly lit and damp and probably planned that way, like something on a tourist's fairy tour of Ireland. Half-full on a Tuesday night. I hate it. Hate the way everyone buzzes when I walk in, the way the glasses clank at just the wrong pitch.

"Just a double shot of whiskey," I say, and the mouth-breather behind the bar tilts his head. "Thanks," I say, to make him move: to pour my whiskey, to take my money, to leave me alone. I swallow fast. Let the heat of the whiskey warm me back up, let it glow beneath my skin and light my insides up like something out of Doctor Who. Come see the amazing glow in the dark girl. She's bigger on the inside, after all.

I turn the glass down on the bar. Slide back toward the door to wait on Julia closer to escape. Offer my finger to the guy (my dad's age, give or take a century, balding and nicotine stained all over) giving me the eye from over his date's shoulder.

"Sorry!" Julia, breathless and carrying a backpack almost the size of her. "Holls!," she says, "You look amaze, it's been, seriously, forever, holy shit." I answer her hug with one of my own, like coming home after years away. I forget why I've avoided her since our leaving certs, our friendship largely down to snaps and likes.

The lights above the pub go out--"sorry, folks, bad breaker, won't be a mo," says the bartender--and we study each other while the volume of conversation around us spirals up and up.

I almost forgot why we've not seen each other for years. _Almost. Almost. Almost._

"You wanna just," Julia says, elbow pointing toward the door.

I nod. The lights flash back on, and my ribs stop crushing my lungs.

*

I know where Lenie's paintings are hanging without even looking at them. They feel like her. Smell like late nights and boiled sweets and a hint of rain, sound like laughter and secrets and hope.

The show is Lenie and a gang of her artist friends all squashed into a too small room: finger foods by Aldi's and a collection of cans clearly made up of whatever everyone involved could bring from home.

Julia tilts her head at the makeshift bar. "I'll just," she says, and shoulders her way through the crowd.

My skin feels electric. Staticky and sparkling. Lenie appears at my side between one breath and the next.

Lenie is - she's _Lenie_. Older, sure, so am I, but still her. She's all softness bleeding into the air around her. Liquid eyes and that shocking short hair, the blue in it making her look even less of this world than she did at fifteen. Sixteen. I feel itchy. Like testifying in court, like my first kiss, like every first day at every new school.

"You came." Lenie stood in front of me, appearing out of nowhere like mist.

"Yeah," I say.

We dance the awkward _hug or handshake or_ dance. A moment, a breath, and we hug. Her arms just the same, the feel of her like slipping through a fairy fort into _Tír nAill_ , all danger and wonder and--

I blink. The room shifts back.

"Can?" Julia asks.

I jump. Breath catching, "shit, fuck," and I press my hand to my heart to try to push it back inside my chest.

Julia laughs, slides a can into my shaky hand. "Hey, Lenie," she says, a quick hug like it's nothing at all, and Lenie walks us through the show. My heartbeat slowly returns to normal, our arms linked like we're back in time.

I was right about which paintings are hers. Drop a few Euro buying one, wrapping it in brown paper for the trip back home.

*

"Holly," Mum calls.

"Mum," I answer.

I tilt the painting against the wall just inside the front door, paper crinkling and loud. Toe off my shoes.

"That you?" Mum asks. As if it could be someone else--like she's hiding a secret other daughter somewhere, one who listens and doesn't tell tales and dresses just howMum would like.

"The one and only," I say. She's just turning on the kettle in the kitchen when I enter the room, toast in her hand and slippers on her feet, dressed for work except for the blazer hanging over the back of a chair.

We've spent the last month passing in this very kitchen, sock feet sliding on the lino, crossing back into our separate spaces. Me to my room. Her to the pile of work on the table. It's easier, really, than Dad's almost pathological need for me to like him: the smiles, the jokes, the undercurrent of distrust.

"Tea?" she asks.

I shrug. She gives me a look, waits for a proper answer. " _Yes_ ," I say, emphasis necessary. "Please," I add, before she can can pour out the rest of the water into the sink. She adds water to her travel mug, covers it while the tea steeps. Steps out of my way so I can make my own cup.

"Good night?" she asks.

I'm not sure how to take that--if she's upset about me traipsing in with the sun, if she's glad I was out with friends, if she's worried I didn't spend all night revising. "Sure," I say. "Met up with Julia--from Kilda's, you remember? She's starting her master's in international something or other next fall--and we went to see Lenie's art show."

"Oh," Mum says. "Tell her, well, both of them, congratulations the next time you speak."

"Right," I say. We watch each other over the steam of my tea, awkward and unsure. I take a quick swallow. It's too hot, burning my tongue and all the way down my throat. "Fuck," I say, and Mum laughs.

She lifts her mug in a mock toast and does a double-take as she notices the time.

"Shit, I'm late," she says. She kisses my forehead, grabs her blazer. Rushes out--"Good luck with your revising," as she changes into her shoes; "I'll probably be home late, not sure about your Dad," as the door closes behind her.

*

I sit down to revise. Stand up again, decide to finally clean out my bedroom; I can't sit still, feel something buzzing under my skin like I have to move. Box after box labelled for the charity shops. I stack them in the corridor, make a note to find out if there's someone who can pick them up.

I'm sweaty and tired by the time I'm done. Hair a mess, face red. I check my phone: nothing, not a snap, not a text, not from Jules or Lenie or anyone. I watch it for I don't know how long, standing there next to my boxes, something telling me not to look away. It begins to ring, _shine bright like a diamond_ , from a blocked number and I drop it. I never set that ringtone. I'm like 99% sure my phone's set to vibrate. I pick the phone back up, fumbling it between my fingers, press accept (I know I shouldn't, feel it down to my bones that it's a bad idea). "Hello?"

No answer. Just silence, and a feeling like my heart is shattering in my chest.

"Is anyone-"

"Hello?"

It sounds like Becca, which. It can't be right. It can't be her. I haven't said her name since the trial, have avoided anything that reminds me of her, but I say it now. "Becca," I say. "Is that-"

A sound like something screaming, or slicing through metal, like nothing I can explain, and the line clicks over and it's Julia screaming and it's Lenie screaming and it's me screaming all together as one.

We decide to meet for drinks. Outside somewhere after the sun goes down, "bring your own cans or whatever, I don't care, one last drink under the stars." I have no clue who says what. Just nod, pretty sure we're all making the same gesture from our separate corners of the city, and wonder if Dad still hides his stash of the good stuff in the same place.

*

There's a park now not far from the Court. Something designed for young families, already past new and turning into another place for teenages to get into trouble. Julia and Lenie are there when I arrive, breathless and late, passing a cigarette back and forth.

"Gross," I say, but I take a long drag when Lenie hands it to me with a muttered _ta_.

"Right," Julia says. "Let's get this over with."

Lenie licks her finger, pinches the cigarette out. Drops it to the ground, then ducks down to pick it up again. Wraps it in tissue and sticks it in her pocket. "I'll put it in a bin later," she says. "I just, you know, the trees and flowers and stuff."

"Jaysus, I missed you," I say. Suddenly honest and overflowing with it: it hurts. I didn't realize anything could hurt this much. "Both of you." Arms clasping arms, and then we're hugging in a circle.

We let go of one another slowly, carefully, like it might break something. Sit on the grass in the same circle, pull our drinks from our bags and take long swallows. Pass them around and share a few drops from each flask, can, bottle: my father's good whisky, a can of something cheap, something rich and red and dry.

"I'm moving to Canada," Lenie says. Eyes wide and her mouth like she wants to swallow her words back down again, hand flapping like she can't decide what to do with it. "In a few months, I have a--yeah."

"London," Julia says. "Grad school and then who knows?"

I take a long swallow, my own flask back in my hand, and look up at the sky. I try to find a star or two lurking behind the clouds, give up when I almost wish on an airplane. "I guess I'm the only one sticking around," I say.

We drink a little longer in silence. Let the sounds of traffic and a too loud stereo and a gang of kids too young to be out this late laugh and whisper and run. I feel like I could sit here forever. Live the rest of my life in this park, with these girls, under this sky.

I put my flask down, lean back on my hands. The grass tickling at my palm as I think about everything and nothing, and I have to say something. "Becca," I say. "I thought I saw her the other--"

"I thought I was going crazy," Julia says, and blanches. "I mean, I'm sorry, Lenie, I didn't mean--"

"It's fine," she says. Waves her hand, takes one last swallow of her beer and puts the can down in front of her. "But, I mean, before we all just," and she waves her arms so I can almost see us drifting in our separate directions, "We should probably talk to her. I got the number last summer, but then I lost my nerve."

I can't talk. Can't think of anything to say for maybe the first time I can remember.

Julia takes a long pull of her wine, that look on her face like she's made a decision. "Tomorrow," she says, "We'll ring her tomorrow, all three of us, together." She nods, and that's it: we're agreed---

Suddenly the electricity goes out under my skin.  

Lenie says, "Did you--"

"Come on," Julia says, pulling us with her as she stands. "Let's go find somewhere loud, somewhere we can get pissed and dance until morning."

"Yeah, sure," Lenie says.

I brush the dirt from my trousers. We're none of us dressed for going out, but there's still a lingering bit of something that tells me we'll get into any club we fancy anyway. "Why not?" I say. Laughter bubbles up between us, contagious and alien and wonderful.

We walk arm in arm in arm, taking up too much space, ignoring the comments and rolled eyes and the old man looking at us like we'd _ever_. I want to feel like this forever. Exams in two weeks, then King's Inns, then adulthood.

Tonight feels like my very last summer.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to x.


End file.
